Board Member

Dr. Thomas W. Barr is a science advisor at Irell & Manella LLP, where he specializes in technical advising for patent litigation and runs Irell's in-house Technical Analysis Laboratory. He has experience advising on various technologies, including computer architecture, integrated circuit design and fabrication, telecommunications, medical and embedded devices, and operating systems/security. Thomas also serves as a consulting scientist and on the board of directors for the Los Angeles Innocence Project, where he brings his technical-legal experience to ensure that flawed science is not used to wrongfully incarcerate innocent persons.

Prior to joining Irell, Thomas was a research assistant at Rice University. His research has focused on computer architecture and operating systems, specifically in the areas of high-performance computing, memory systems, robotics, and embedded systems. Thomas was the original maintainer of embeddedpython.org, an open-source Python environment for microcontrollers. He is an active member of the Association for Computer Machinery and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Thomas earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science and his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University. He earned his B.S. in Engineering and Music, with distinction, from Harvey Mudd College.